Feb #5 Arrangement..
Which I should subtitle ORDEAL.
“At what price beauty? ”
I think you have to be a woman to appreciate this one.
I pull a brush or two out of a drawer, and if I’m lucky they make it back into the drawer. Maybe that same day even!
Not this gal.. She’s got quite the ” ARRANGEMENT”.
And don’t mess with it.
This was one of the new Vintage lenses. But now I forget which one. I should’ve written it down. Sorry Marc.
Nothing will work unless you do.
John Wooden
And working I have been! (at my photography, any way.)
I didn’t want my poor neglected blog ‘s friends to think that I’ve just been sitting around eating bon bon’s waiting to not fulfill my commitment to the pictures for the 365 Challenge. Au Contraire!
I’ve been quite the busy little sick gal. I’ve been working so diligently at trying to get better at my basketball shots. Photos that is. A Michael Jordan I will never be. Just as I’ve been working hard, so have our basketball teams. Our boys and girls have both made County play offs – So proud of them!
Which means that I will even get the opportunity for extended practice this season. I didn’t want to bore you all with shots every time I took some , but here are a few that I just decided were post -worthy.
If I were a bit more clever, and had a bit more time, and hand strength left, I’d set it to some really balling music and video up for your viewing pleasure. But I’m not feeling very clever, I don’t have the time and my hands are a lost cause this close to treatment.
Hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I have enjoyed taking them nonetheless!
Never thought I’d be the sort of photographer with a photo in a contest… yet here I am!
This photo has been entered into Rodposse’s Photo Contest …
5th RPC- 22nd Challenger- Theme : LINES.
Would love your votes! Click the link and click LIKE for Natalia and I please!
RODPOSSE PHOTO CONTEST : LINES
What’s one more click in your day of endless clicking? and hey, maybe someday, you’ll need me to click something for you… 😉 { a you click my link, I’ll click yours sort of thing!}
We thank you muchly, friends. ❤
http://rodposse.com/2013/01/30/22nd-challenger-confusing/
(if you’re more of a copy/paster ^)
Life is flying by me.
Which is good and bad I suppose.
We are painting Natalia’s room. She had gotten a gift certificate from my sister for an occasion that I can’t even remember- a birthday? Christmas? and she chose the color last summer. It’s been sitting in our garage ever since. Finding free time to paint has been quite an issue. This gal’s schedule must rival the President’s. School til 230. Then Cheer for 2 hours then home just to eat then gymnastic’s for 2 more hours. That’s only if there isn’t a basketball game.
Having Nick help to drive has been an asset but baseball practice started for him which also pulls him and his father away which goes back to it just being me again.
I don’t know how these kids keep up.
I honestly wonder how I do it sometimes, too. Lately more so than ever.
I am the only person in the house who is doing laundry, cleaning , cooking , running the errands and finishing the paint right now. I know I’m not telling the women of the world ( and some men) things that they don’t already know. I just needed a place to vent. Our dishwasher is broken (in addition to the stove, and the microwave, and the fan above the stove.. and the… ) and my husband is in no hurry to fix it. I therefore believe that he should be the one to do the dishes.. Makes sense, right? Somehow it’s not working out that way. And he certainly doesn’t have a disease that affects his hands quite like mine does. The kids were home for one day and I asked Nick to do the dishes while Natalia and I painted. That went over well. I told Nick that maybe his father is just confused about what decade it is because I wear aprons in the kitchen,that maybe he thinks dishwashers just haven’t been invented yet… ?!? I think I may have to stop wearing aprons for a while. See if it changes things. I’m open to suggestions.
Anyway… I am still trying to stay on top of my photo group challenges. But I’m failing miserably.
Here are day #27 – outside
and Day #28 -inside.
Sunday – #27 Outside– we had a snow day. I took a break from painting and looked out of our window and saw those footprints. I was so confused. Which way was this person going and exactly *how*were they walking? what happened to the rest of their footprints?
Of course I had to take pictures while we were painting..
So , Day #28- Inside-
You’ll notice we painted “inside” Natalia’s room. You also may notice up in the corner that some of us had a bit of difficulty painting inside the lines. And that’s OK. “it gives it character” … Right gals? 😉
When people ask me what color Natalia chose to paint her room the best descriptive I can use is ” Tiffany box blue” . I find that almost 90 % of women can recall what I mean immediately. Tiffany box blue is an iconic color. It’s more than just a color .. it’s a dream for many a little girl, too. My daughter picked that color along with black trim and some black and white carpet/ curtains and has unknowingly made herself her own little Tiffany box!
Two wonderful women in my life sent me a gift from Tiffany’s as a special , *very* special gift when I first started treatment. It was a horseshoe necklace.. to “let the luck fall in”…. (you may have seen this photo before – as self portrait I did as a tribute to those 2 amazing women.2 special gals who helped me get through those first 10 days of treatment.)
Getting that beloved blue box in the mail was such an incredible experience for me. I hope someday to be able to do that for others, for my daughter, too. But for now, this was as close as I could get…
I know it won’t mean nearly the same thing to her, but I sure loved seeing the smiles on her face the painting days! And as fast as the days are going right now, I’ll treasure each and every one of them while I can.
Day #26- Guest.
Meet Lisai. Stunning and dark. Robust. Like a great cup of coffee, she is!
Stark contrast to my fair ginger, Natalia.
So when the snow started to fall, I simply had to get them out there together. Could not have been more pleased with the results. The camera loves Lisai! I just wish Lisai loved the camera as much as it loves her.
“So, if I dream I have you, I have you,
For all our joys are but fantastical…”
Elegy X: The Dream, John Donne
365 Challenge – Day #24 Faux and Day #25 Real
My husband’s grandma’s fur coat.
I know the answer. But I’m not telling.
So old. So cozy. So not fashionable any more. 😦
(yes , I wanted this photo to be blurry. I feel like if you have to add that disclaimer, the photo didn’t end up like you wanted it to OR your friends really don’t get your work. )
I promised myself that this year I would try to learn as many new things as I could.
To push my brain to it’s limits.
RSD patients can be found to have damage to the same parts of their brains as stroke victims or Alzheimer patients. Part of my testing for my ketamine infusions made me all to aware of just how far my condition has messed with my brain. Part of the very reason that we have RSD at all is because the wiring in our brains has some how gotten all messed up and the pain signals have become confused somewhere along the way. Thereby making the simplest little tasks sometimes very challenging.
This little project took me almost 3 hours. Interrupted by making dinner, but three hours nonetheless. I was so confused while I was trying to do it. But I did it. And my brain held up. Now I’m just exhausted. It’s not perfect nor exactly how I really wanted it, which was the hardest part for me- allowing myself to say something was finished before I considered it “perfect.” Nonetheless, I was so proud of myself when I finished it. Though it was very difficult for me to complete this task, very confusing, I did it! Just don’t ask me to do it again 😉
– PS- I should get “bonus points” – because this photo is of my teenage daughter and though she is beautiful and I love her, teenage girls are nothing if not confusing!!
Day #15 Confusing
Forgotten.
Childhood?
A favorite toy?
How to be a child?
Our children?
Natalia’s first gymnastic competition was on Saturday. She competed last year as a Level 7 USA Gymnast and this year is now an Advanced Prep Optional ( it’s a level for girls who don’t quite have all the skills for Level 8 or those who for whatever reason just aren’t ready to compete the next compulsory level quite yet. )
We could not have been more pleased with her performance! Gymnastics is such a fascinating sport to me. These girls train so intensely. I can’t wait for competition season so that I can be surprised by all of the new tricks that Natalia and her teammates have mastered during the off season. This year was no exception. Natalia has added a layout full twist to her floor routine. Floor is my favorite thing to watch the girls compete and I honestly think it’s the thing that our gym tends to excel at the most consistently.
Yesterday was no exception. Natalia ended up doing very well for her first meet- she placed First All Around (36.00). Captured a 1st on beam (9.3) and floor (9.25), and a first on bars (8.95) and a third on vault (8.5).
There was a bit of a some excitement and a resurgence of interest in gymnastics last year following the Olympics. I could not have been happier for the girls at the gym. I feel like what these gymnasts go through is sometimes underrated and under-appreciated and surely under-valued because it is not a school sport. I get upset because I personally think that they don’t get the recognition that I feel they deserve. If people knew how much work these girls put into learning just one simple ‘trick’, maybe they’d value the sport a bit more. These girls are true athletes. Hours and hours spent in a gym to master their craft. They have to be braver and stronger and even more courageous than most other athletes. Fear is a word that they check at the door.
Competition days are difficult for me. (though surely nothing like they are for the gymnasts!) They often involve long rides in the car, sitting for hours on cold hard bleachers and then long rides home again. We never eat right. Traveling with me is like traveling with a toddler. I ‘ve got my “goody bag”- water, snacks, socks, meds, music -for distraction if the pain gets bad, pillows, blankets, gloves… If you’ve learned anything by now, you know that things like travel and long days I don’t get along real well, but the only times I have missed her meets were because of treatments. If it were up to me, I’d watch her and her team compete every weekend! I’ll just deal with a longer recovery time afterward. She won’t be competing forever and while she is , I’m going to do my darndest to make sure when she looks up, she sees her mom in the crowd.
I’m not sure why, but yesterday I really struggled to photograph this event. Out of practice maybe? You cannot use flash in a gym, the lighting is typically even worse than in a school gym. Gymnasts move fast. Very fast. This was the first meet with all new routines so I wasn’t sure how to follow them. AND to complicate the process, for every event but the beam, I was shooting through the safety bars of the balcony. I did manage to get a few decent shots of each event.
Special thanks to my two photographer friends for responding to my panicked texts about how to try to take the shots from that meet. (and understanding that sometimes my panic is born of my disease and my over active nervous system making me forget every thing I already know!) You guys are life savers to me. Truly.
Anyway, for those of you who don’t have amazingly talented people who fly through the air with the greatest of ease, allow me to share mine! The girls of FGI. It’s a pretty short season – States is March 16- and our gym only competes about 5 meets- so enjoy these girls with me. They really are something special.
allsortsofhope 